Our biosphere is chock-full of meteorological oddities: freakish cold snaps, dust devils, rains of frogs or fish. Here is a sampling of the oddest of the odd:
Red sprites and blue jets. Occasionally, a storm cell will release a giant, reddish charge into the upper atmosphere—called a “sprite,” these discharges of energy can top out at 30 to 55 miles high, practically high-fiving the ionosphere. Sprites are triggered by a large, normal lightning flash lower down.
Another type of capping cloud, called a “pileus,” forms over other rising air masses rather than mountaintops. Pilei can be seen over cumulus clouds, nuclear explosions, even volcanic eruptions—as on June 12, 2009, when the International Space Station took this startling video-like series of photos of Sarychev Peak, a violently exploding Russian volcano.
Properly called a parhelion, a sun dog occurs when sunlight bends through a high, icy haze in the atmosphere. On either side of a faint halo around the sun appear two bright—sometimes very bright—spots, the result of refraction.
Giant snowflakes/hail. The largest snowflake on record was 15 inches in diameter. The biggest flakes are created when thousands of symmetrical, 6-sided snow crystals freeze into one large disk.
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